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Get interviewed by Lil Dee of Rap Monster Radio. Rap Monster Radio is an online hip hop radio station with more than 60,000 listeners a month in over 180 countries.We will interview and provide you with an mp3 copy of the interview.Get the worldwide exposure you deserve.…See More

We are located in Hayesville, NC. In April we begin our new season with outstanding Poet Mike James. Mike will read at Writers' Night Out in Blairsville, GA on Friday evening April 13. On Saturday, April 14, he will teach a class at my studio.Formally SpeakingThis class will focus on different types of traditional poetic forms such as the sonnet, the villanelle, and the sestina, and will also include other verse forms such as erasures, found poems, prose poems, and last poems.Contact Glenda…See More

Step inside the revolutionary book, Silent Spring as its author Rachel Carson reveals the reckless destruction of our living world. Written more than 55 years ago Silent Spring inspired the Environmental Movement and has never been out of print. And now you have a chance to ask the author, Rachel Carson, how this came to be. But these aren’t just performances. They’re a chance to step into Living History – to ask questions and go one on one with a women whose books shaped our country and our…See More

"She looks like I look in my imagination right before I've had my coffee ... relaxed, bothered (by something, anything) and fully aware that I'm almost, but not quite, the center of the universe ... a feeling that quickly fades after that…"

She was working on the "About the Authors" section of "Echoes Across the Blue Ridge" when I captured this one morning. Though you can't see it, her coffee cup was within gentle reach that morning. Roxie is at her feet.

In 1945 Indiana prohibited marriage between a white person and anyone with more than one-eighth "Negro blood." Yet Daniel (black) and Anna (white) gave up family, friends, and eventually even country to create a life together. Their 42-year marriage…

"Rob,
Thanks for putting this into one document. I've been following the narrative in the Citizen-Times. I find it an added resource for my next writing project. In 1910 my husband's grandfather (1866-1947) showed up in Missouri and said…"

A Chronology of Asheville and WNC Events in History

1000: The Cherokee, who’d introduced maize agriculture to the region, began cultivating beans.

1540: Hernando De Soto led troops to East Tennessee through either the Hickory Nut or Swannanoa Gap, finding gold and copper and inspiring a succession of Spanish miners.

1663: Charles II bestows territory between the 31st and 36th parallels in America to eight proprietors.

1670: Charlestonians, newly established, set up a vigorous trade with the Cherokee for animal pelts.

1739: Smallpox, carried by a slave ship to Charleston, traveled with fur traders into the mountains and destroyed half the Cherokee population in one year.

Dec. 18, 1761: The Cherokee signed a peace treaty with the British at the end of the French & Indian War.

1776: World famous botanist William Bartram comes to the region.

1776: In reaction to attacks on Old Fort, American General Griffith Rutherford goes on a scorched earth march to Murphy, destroying a few dozen Indian towns in one month, and giving future settlers their first glimpses of the land.

1777: Jim and Sue, the first African American slaves on this region, were brought by William Moore to Hominy Valley.

Oct. 7, 1780. The Battle of Kings Mountain, the death knell for the British Army, is won due in large part to the Overmountain Men.

Spring, 1784: Samuel Davidson settled on Cherokee land along Christian Creek in Swannanoa, and was killed by Indians as his wife, child, and Negro servant fled to Old Fort.

1785: The Treaty of Hopewell officially ceded Cherokee lands west of the Blue Ridge to the United States.

June 14, 1787: James McConnell Smith was born in Asheville.

1790: John Weaver brought his family through Bull Gap to Reems Creek, got along with local Indians, and was followed in settlement by Captain David Vance.

Jan. 14, 1792: The N.C. State Senate ratified the law creating Buncombe County, which then included all of western North Carolina south of Mitchell County.

Apr. 16, 1792: Buncombe County government held its first meeting in Col. William Davidson’s barn on the Swannanoa and authorized roads from Davidson’s to future Transylvania County; Reems Creek to future Yancey County; and Davidson’s to Reems Creek, with a branch from public square to Beaverdam Creek.

1792: Robert Henry, Battle of Kings Mountain veteran, established Union Hill Academy (later Newton Academy), the first schoolhouse west of the Blue Ridge.

July, 1793: The first county courthouse was built, and the town named Morristown, later changed to Asheville.

1793: Zebulon Baird, who drove the first four-wheel wagon into the county, built Asheville’s first store.

1794: John Burton received a grant of 200-acres in the center of town and divided them into 42 lots for sale.

Jan. 27, 1798: The state legislature incorporated the village of Asheville.

1799: The last buffalo in the area was killed by Joseph Rice at Bull’s Gap.

1800: Abraham Reynolds, a Baptist preacher, moved into the Bent Creek area and lived peaceably with the local Indians.

1800: Bishop Francis Asbury, John Wesley’s representative in America, began his circuit-riding of this region, often stopping at the Killian place in Beaverdam.

Jan. 4, 1801: David Swain, future Governor of North Carolina and University of North Carolina president, was born in Beaverdam.

1808: Haywood County is formed.

1814: James Patton built and opened Eagle Hotel in Asheville, housing, among others, the English botanist John Lyon in his dying days.

Feb. 4, 1817: The U.S. Supreme Court decided that British grants to Granville territory lands, which included Asheville, had become invalid with the Treaty of Paris.

1822: Congressman Felix Walker insisted on “speaking for Buncombe” in the House of Representatives regarding support for military parades, and the press, disdainful of Walker’s anti-Indian policies, coined the word, “bunkum,” to mean empty noise.

1827: Sulphur Springs is discovered by Sam, slave of Robert Henry, who builds a hotel and health resort.

1827: Charles and Susan Baring of Charleston build Mountain Lodge in Flat Rock, setting off its growth as a summer resort town.

1828: The Buncombe Turnpike opened, following four years work improving the abandoned pathway, and enabled the transportation of livestock from mountain farms to South Carolina markets.

1828: The inaugural issue of the first Native American newspaper, the “Cherokee Phoenix,” is printed in English and Cherokee.

1828: Thomas Stradley, a Baptist minister, arrives from England and becomes a leader in establishing Baptist conferences in the region.

1830: Sulphur Springs Hotel, the first health resort in the area, opened on the present site of Malvern Hills in West Asheville.

1838: Cherokee removal began.

1839: Henderson County was formed

1840: James McConnell Smith built his showplace house on Victoria Road, now a local history museum under the auspices of the Western North Carolina Historical Association.

1844: George Avery is born, a slave to William Wallace McDowell, who would encourage Avery to join the Union Army for a pension and would give land to him for a community in what is now Kenilworth.

1845: Elizabeth Blackwell came to teach for Dr. John Dickson at his Women’s Seminary behind the Methodist Church in Asheville, and later became the world’s first female M.D.

1847: The Miller Meeting House, now Trinity United Methodist Church, was established in West Asheville.

1848: William Holland Thomas, adopted by Cherokee Chief Yonaguska, was elected N.C. State Senator.

1850: Tax rates were: 5 cents per pig, 20 cents per dog, and $5 on a practicing lawyer; there was a $20 fine for betting on ten pins, and a 50 cent levy for street performing.

1851: The Asheville and Greenville Plank Road was built, abandoned after the Civil War.

1856: Mars Hill University was founded as the French Broad Baptist Institute.

1857: Dr. Elisha Mitchell, discoverer of what is now called Mt. Mitchell as the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, is found dead in a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the Black Mountains.

1859: The first organized patrol of policemen was formed.

April 18, 1861: Three days after President Lincoln’s call for troops, William Wallace McDowell led the Buncombe Riflemen out of Asheville to join the First North Carolina Regiment of the Confederacy.

May 20, 1861: North Carolina secedes from the Union.

1861: An Asheville plant for the manufacture of Enfield rifles was opened by Ephraim Clayton, R.W. Pulliam, and William Rankin to arm Confederate soldiers.

July 1, 1862: The Battle of Malvern Hill results in 296 Western North Carolina casualties.

Jan. 18, 1863: Confederate Colonel James Keith led a massacre against Union sympathizers in Shelton Laurel, Madison County, after locals had raided the town’s salt larders.

1890: The city’s population as well as property value quadrupled in the decade since the arrival of the railroad.

1892: The Young Men’s Institute in Asheville was built by Vanderbilt and his architect, Richard Sharp Smith, for the black community, which would purchase it in 1906.

1893: Montford was incorporated into the city.

1893: The volunteer fire department received its first hose wagon and fire horses.

1894: Western North Carolina railroad was bought by Southern Railway.

1894: Asheville Farm School opened, merging with Dorland-Bell School in 1942 to become Warren Wilson Junior College.

1897: The Montreat Retreat Association was formed.

1897: Vance Monument was erected, with funding from George Willis Pack, three years after Vance's death.

1898: Company K, composed of black soldiers, including E.W. Pearson, Burton Street community founder, fought in the Spanish-American War.

1898: Carl Schenck established the Biltmore School of Forestry— the first such school in America—advocating the long-term management of forests as producers of lumber.

1899: Asheville Mica Company was established, capitalizing on the region’s prominence as the center of mica production.

1899: George Willis Pack bestowed the Palmetto Building on Public Square to the library association, formed in 1879.

1899: The Good Roads Movement was established in Asheville, making it the first in the South.

1903: Asheville began drawing water from the North Fork of the Swannanoa River through gravity lines, supplementing the “Old Reservoir” at the top of College Street and the “Old Waterworks” near today’s Recreation Park.

1904: Riverside Park opened as the premier recreation site in Asheville; it was destroyed by the flood of 1916.

1906: E.W. Grove built his first project in Asheville, a residential park on Charlotte Street.

1906. Champion Fibre Company establishes a pulp mill in Canton.

Nov. 13, 1906: Will Harris went on a killing spree in downtown Asheville and was hunted down by a posse, the episode becoming the basis for Thomas Wolfe’s “Child by Tiger”

Oct. 8, 1907: Asheville voted for prohibition.

1908: St. Lawrence Catholic Church (now Basilica), was completed, the work of Rafael Guastavino.

1908: The English Mica Co. was established in the Spruce Pine area, followed by Harris Clay & Mining Co. and the Spruce Pine Mica Co., making the area the leading producer of the insulating material.

1910: Little Switzerland was created at Grassy Mountain with land mostly purchased from Nancy DeWeese Buchanan.

1911: Gus Baty fell from Whiteside Mountain, trying to impress a girl, was hung up in a branch 60 feet down, and was rescued by Charlie Wright, whom the Carnegie Commission then awarded a gold medal for heroism.

1913: “Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart was published.

1913: Champion Paper puts its sawmill village into full operation in Sunburst, which thrived for a dozen years during a logging boom on property now the site of Lake Logan.

July 1, 1913: Grove Park Inn opened.

1914: The picturesque Jackson County courthouse is completed in Sylva.

July 18, 1915: Judge B.F. Long convicted 12 bootleggers, said Asheville is infested, and there must be a secret trust.

August 4, 1915: Asheville Country Club hosts its first annual invitation golf tournament.

1916: British musicologist Cecil Sharp came to Madison County and collected many folk songs from Jane Hicks Gentry.

Feb. 21, 1916. The largest earthquake in N.C. history takes place in Waynesville.

May 18, 1916: Kiffin Rockwell of Asheville became the first American to shoot down an enemy plane in WWI.

July 16, 1916: The Great Flood.

1917: West Asheville, incorporated in 1889, was consolidated into the city of Asheville by referendum.

1917: S.B. Penick & Co., the world’s largest distributor of botanical medicines, sets up its largest warehouse in Asheville, drawing on the herb collecting of mountaineers.

1918: Many die in influenza epidemic.

1918. The U.S. Secretary of War authorized the construction of a large tuberculosis hospital in Oteen, and it would eventually become the V.A. Hospital.

1920: The Farmers Federation, led by James McClure Jr., was formed as a cooperative to provide market advantages to farmers.

1920: The Western North Carolina Apple Show at Battery Park Hotel highlighted the region’s emergence as an apple producer,.

1920: An all-male Buncombe County electorate ushered Lilian Exum Clement into the North Carolina General Assembly by a vote of 10,368 to 41.

1922: Stevens Lee High School for African American students was built.

1922: The first city plan was developed by Dr. John Nolen.

1923: At the behest of Edith Vanderbilt, Thomas Wadley Raoul, and others, the village of Biltmore Forest was established around its famous country club.

1923: The first lots in Lakeview Park went on sale, developers having harnessed a “crystal mountain rivulet” to form Beaver Lake

1924: 28-year old L.B. Jackson built Western North Carolina’s first skyscraper, the Jackson Building, on the site of W.O. Wolfe’s monument shop.

1925: African American mason James Vester Miller builds the new municipal building, now Asheville Police and Fire Dept., having previously built several churches.

1925: Charles D. Owen moved Beacon Manufacturing to Swannanoa.

1926: The real estate boom Asheville reached its peak, with the value of building permits topping $9 million, compared to $800,000 in 1919.

1979: Givens Estates, a large, multi-functional housing development for the elderly, opened.

1979: The Bank of Asheville, the last locally owned bank in Asheville, was absorbed by N.C. National Bank.

1980: I-240 was dedicated.

1980--The Planning & Zoning Commission designated an 11-block area of the city “blighted,” clearing a path for the Strouse-Greenberg Mall, the construction of which would be prevented in part by the Save Downtown Asheville movement.

1982: Malaprop’s Bookstore and Cafe opened.

1982: “Places Rated Almanac” named Asheville was the most livable small city in the country.

1983: A Zuchelli, Hunter and Associates study of Wall Street led to a remaking of the district; a parking garage is built in 1987, and Jubilee! moved into its space in 1989.

1984: A Federal nuclear waste dump proposal for the Sandy Mush area was defeated by area residents and the newly formed WNC Alliance.

1985: The renovation of the old Bon Marche and Ivey’s building into the Haywood Park Hotel signaled the beginning of new investment in downtown Asheville.

1985: Corner Cupboard Antiques Mall moved from Wall Street to Lexington Avenue, initiating the development of an antiques mecca in downtown Asheville.

1987: The city drafted the 2010 plan.

1988: RiverLink was incorporated to spearhead the economic and environmental revitalization of the French Broad River.

1988: Mountain Housing Opportunities was formed, building affordable homes in the River Arts District and elsewhere.

1989: Voters rejected a bond to build a treatment plant to use the French Broad River for drinking water.

1989: The North Carolina General Assembly named the Plott Hound the official State Dog.